Aguinis et al. (Reference Aguinis, Ramani, Campbell, Bernal-Turnes, Drewry and Edgerton2017) highlighted the gender disparity in authorship of publications within the field of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. We agree with the authors that this is a troubling finding and think that this gender disparity within our field is the most critical implication of the focal article. I-O psychologists are specifically trained to address employment issues, including gender disparities at work. To see such disconcerting findings in our area of expertise is akin to a sports team losing to a competitor when they have the home court advantage. Namely, we are left feeling deflated and asking ourselves, “What went wrong?”
In the sports arena, home game losses are not exceedingly uncommon, but this was no ordinary loss. This was a blowout! Let's take a look at the stats. Starting with the textbooks highlighted in the focal article, of the eight authors of those six textbooks, only one is female (Culbertson). This gender disparity cannot be attributed to a faulty assumption that the books were written before women were active within the I-O psychology community, as one textbook was published in 2013 and the remaining textbooks were published in 2016 or later. Further, Aguinis et al.’s most-cited author data provide a grim picture, with women comprising a mere 9% of the most-cited authors and the first woman (Ones) on the list ranked at number 10. Similarly, bleak statistics show that women comprise 15% of first authors and 32% of coauthors.
To add to Aguinis et al.’s (Reference Aguinis, Ramani, Campbell, Bernal-Turnes, Drewry and Edgerton2017) finding and to further understand the I-O psychology gender disparity issue, we conducted a cursory review of the gender makeup of the top I-O psychology graduate programs (as ranked by Gibby, Reeve, Grauer, Mohr, & Zickar, Reference Gibby, Reeve, Grauer, Mohr and Zickar2002; see Table 1).Footnote
1
We then looked at these institutions’ faculty and doctoral student listings on the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology's (SIOP's) Graduate Training Programs in I-O Psychology and Related Fields Web page to determine the numbers of male and female faculty and doctoral students in the each program. First, the good news: In terms of numbers, it appears there is no gender disparity regarding doctoral students in I-O psychology programs, with women accounting for 57% of all students in PhD programs. The picture changes, however, when we examine faculty positions. According to the 25 schools we reviewed, 41% of current faculty are female, and 76% (19 of 25) of schools had more male than female faculty members (two schools have equal gender representation, and four schools have more women). Interestingly, the schools in our list that are predominantly female have a high ratio of women overall (four to one). These outlier schools with a high proportion of women faculty members skew the data such that when we deleted these four schools, the percent of female faculty across the remaining 19 programs drops from 41% to 33%.
Table 1.
Gender Make-Up of Sample of 25 I-O Psychology PhD Programs
Based on this information and combined with the striking statistics in Aguinis et al.’s (Reference Aguinis, Ramani, Campbell, Bernal-Turnes, Drewry and Edgerton2017) focal article, we believe it is imperative that we return to our own playbook to try to change this pattern of gender bias in publications and I-O psychology graduate program faculty composition. An examination of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) gender literature can help provide a framework for why the I-O psychology publication bias has occurred. Thus, we offer three hypotheses that provide a foundation to help explain why women are less represented in STEM tenure-track faculty positions and relatedly the underrepresentation of women in publications in I-O psychology journals and faculty positions in top programs.
The “leaking pipeline model” (Blickenstaff, Reference Blickenstaff2005; Glass & Minnotte, Reference Glass and Minnotte2010; Xu, Reference Xu2008) suggests that if there is an adequate supply of women graduating with doctorates in I-O psychology, there is probably a systemic problem with recruiting, retaining, and promoting women in I-O psychology positions that provide for the support and encouragement to publish in top outlets. Thus, the proverbial “pipe” has a leak between women's graduation from graduate school and fulfillment of this important job expectation. Evidence for this leak is supported by our earlier analysis that suggests that although women account for 57% of I-O psychology graduate students, women only account for 41% of I-O psychology faculty. The key question is, where is the leak? Is it having opportunities in graduate school to prepare oneself with tools to be a successful researcher? Or is it getting a job that provides the support and encouragement to become a prolific researcher? Finding the possible leak(s) would allow us to fix the leak, and increase the number of I-O publications by female I-O psychologists.
Another possible hypothesis is the “deficit model” (Xu, Reference Xu2008), which suggests that there are fewer numbers of women in key academic I-O psychology positions that support and encourage high-level research because of formal and informal gender biases that deprive women of leadership opportunities, pay, grant funding, and general support equal to men at an institutional level. The lack of equal representation of women in an I-O psychology department can possibly lead to perceptions of an organizational and professional climate that is “cold” and unfriendly to women (Blackwell, Snyder, & Mavriplis, Reference Blackwell, Snyder and Mavriplis2009; Blickenstaff, Reference Blickenstaff2005). Due to this unfriendly and inhospitable climate, women may have higher turnover rates in their academic careers (Xu, Reference Xu2008). The resulting lack of women in key I-O psychology positions also provides fewer opportunities for women to have female role models and to be mentored by women—an important factor in women's development in their jobs (Ghosh, Reference Ghosh2014).
“Gender bias” and “gender schemas,” or beliefs about gender roles, could also play a role in how women are perceived and treated as I-O psychologists. Cognitively, grouping men and women into categories is generally useful; however, this implicit and explicit categorization based on traditional gender roles (i.e., men are scientists) can lead to sexism, which, in turn, can lead to discrimination. This discrimination could emerge as publication bias. Although our field does offer some protection from biases in the publication process (e.g., blind reviews), the system is not perfect. Biases can occur at the editorial level, as well within publication processes that do not have blind reviews (e.g., book chapters, conference papers, textbooks). Furthermore, gender schemas may affect women's selection into top I-O psychology positions or for jobs that require research and publication in top journals.
We urge researchers within the I-O psychology community to more fully explore each of these hypotheses offered by the STEM literature. We also urge each member of the I-O psychology community to take a close look at his or her own belief systems and behaviors, and make a conscious decision to take steps to rectify this disparity. Small, individual adjustments can lead to large, systemic changes across our community. Aguinis et al. (Reference Aguinis, Ramani, Campbell, Bernal-Turnes, Drewry and Edgerton2017) were concerned with students’ (future practitioners and researchers) first exposure to I-O psychology through undergraduate textbooks. They stress that how our occupation is publicly presented will affect the identity of its future members. We argue that the gender crisis could also send a message about who we are and what we value as members of the academy. Luckily, undergraduate students are not necessarily keen on the current gender disparity in the field, as textbook citations only list the last and not the first names of authors. However, the gender disparity will become apparent as those undergraduate students further explore their “favorite topics” and graduate schools. Summarily, we need to “retake our house” and show that I-O psychology values all players regardless of sex (or race, or other individual difference)!
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Aguinis et al. (Reference Aguinis, Ramani, Campbell, Bernal-Turnes, Drewry and Edgerton2017) highlighted the gender disparity in authorship of publications within the field of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. We agree with the authors that this is a troubling finding and think that this gender disparity within our field is the most critical implication of the focal article. I-O psychologists are specifically trained to address employment issues, including gender disparities at work. To see such disconcerting findings in our area of expertise is akin to a sports team losing to a competitor when they have the home court advantage. Namely, we are left feeling deflated and asking ourselves, “What went wrong?”
In the sports arena, home game losses are not exceedingly uncommon, but this was no ordinary loss. This was a blowout! Let's take a look at the stats. Starting with the textbooks highlighted in the focal article, of the eight authors of those six textbooks, only one is female (Culbertson). This gender disparity cannot be attributed to a faulty assumption that the books were written before women were active within the I-O psychology community, as one textbook was published in 2013 and the remaining textbooks were published in 2016 or later. Further, Aguinis et al.’s most-cited author data provide a grim picture, with women comprising a mere 9% of the most-cited authors and the first woman (Ones) on the list ranked at number 10. Similarly, bleak statistics show that women comprise 15% of first authors and 32% of coauthors.
To add to Aguinis et al.’s (Reference Aguinis, Ramani, Campbell, Bernal-Turnes, Drewry and Edgerton2017) finding and to further understand the I-O psychology gender disparity issue, we conducted a cursory review of the gender makeup of the top I-O psychology graduate programs (as ranked by Gibby, Reeve, Grauer, Mohr, & Zickar, Reference Gibby, Reeve, Grauer, Mohr and Zickar2002; see Table 1).Footnote 1 We then looked at these institutions’ faculty and doctoral student listings on the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology's (SIOP's) Graduate Training Programs in I-O Psychology and Related Fields Web page to determine the numbers of male and female faculty and doctoral students in the each program. First, the good news: In terms of numbers, it appears there is no gender disparity regarding doctoral students in I-O psychology programs, with women accounting for 57% of all students in PhD programs. The picture changes, however, when we examine faculty positions. According to the 25 schools we reviewed, 41% of current faculty are female, and 76% (19 of 25) of schools had more male than female faculty members (two schools have equal gender representation, and four schools have more women). Interestingly, the schools in our list that are predominantly female have a high ratio of women overall (four to one). These outlier schools with a high proportion of women faculty members skew the data such that when we deleted these four schools, the percent of female faculty across the remaining 19 programs drops from 41% to 33%.
Gender Make-Up of Sample of 25 I-O Psychology PhD Programs
Note. Numbers came from SIOP's Graduate Training Programs in I-O Psychology and Related Fields (http://my.siop.org/GTP).
*More female faculty members than male faculty members.
Based on this information and combined with the striking statistics in Aguinis et al.’s (Reference Aguinis, Ramani, Campbell, Bernal-Turnes, Drewry and Edgerton2017) focal article, we believe it is imperative that we return to our own playbook to try to change this pattern of gender bias in publications and I-O psychology graduate program faculty composition. An examination of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) gender literature can help provide a framework for why the I-O psychology publication bias has occurred. Thus, we offer three hypotheses that provide a foundation to help explain why women are less represented in STEM tenure-track faculty positions and relatedly the underrepresentation of women in publications in I-O psychology journals and faculty positions in top programs.
The “leaking pipeline model” (Blickenstaff, Reference Blickenstaff2005; Glass & Minnotte, Reference Glass and Minnotte2010; Xu, Reference Xu2008) suggests that if there is an adequate supply of women graduating with doctorates in I-O psychology, there is probably a systemic problem with recruiting, retaining, and promoting women in I-O psychology positions that provide for the support and encouragement to publish in top outlets. Thus, the proverbial “pipe” has a leak between women's graduation from graduate school and fulfillment of this important job expectation. Evidence for this leak is supported by our earlier analysis that suggests that although women account for 57% of I-O psychology graduate students, women only account for 41% of I-O psychology faculty. The key question is, where is the leak? Is it having opportunities in graduate school to prepare oneself with tools to be a successful researcher? Or is it getting a job that provides the support and encouragement to become a prolific researcher? Finding the possible leak(s) would allow us to fix the leak, and increase the number of I-O publications by female I-O psychologists.
Another possible hypothesis is the “deficit model” (Xu, Reference Xu2008), which suggests that there are fewer numbers of women in key academic I-O psychology positions that support and encourage high-level research because of formal and informal gender biases that deprive women of leadership opportunities, pay, grant funding, and general support equal to men at an institutional level. The lack of equal representation of women in an I-O psychology department can possibly lead to perceptions of an organizational and professional climate that is “cold” and unfriendly to women (Blackwell, Snyder, & Mavriplis, Reference Blackwell, Snyder and Mavriplis2009; Blickenstaff, Reference Blickenstaff2005). Due to this unfriendly and inhospitable climate, women may have higher turnover rates in their academic careers (Xu, Reference Xu2008). The resulting lack of women in key I-O psychology positions also provides fewer opportunities for women to have female role models and to be mentored by women—an important factor in women's development in their jobs (Ghosh, Reference Ghosh2014).
“Gender bias” and “gender schemas,” or beliefs about gender roles, could also play a role in how women are perceived and treated as I-O psychologists. Cognitively, grouping men and women into categories is generally useful; however, this implicit and explicit categorization based on traditional gender roles (i.e., men are scientists) can lead to sexism, which, in turn, can lead to discrimination. This discrimination could emerge as publication bias. Although our field does offer some protection from biases in the publication process (e.g., blind reviews), the system is not perfect. Biases can occur at the editorial level, as well within publication processes that do not have blind reviews (e.g., book chapters, conference papers, textbooks). Furthermore, gender schemas may affect women's selection into top I-O psychology positions or for jobs that require research and publication in top journals.
We urge researchers within the I-O psychology community to more fully explore each of these hypotheses offered by the STEM literature. We also urge each member of the I-O psychology community to take a close look at his or her own belief systems and behaviors, and make a conscious decision to take steps to rectify this disparity. Small, individual adjustments can lead to large, systemic changes across our community. Aguinis et al. (Reference Aguinis, Ramani, Campbell, Bernal-Turnes, Drewry and Edgerton2017) were concerned with students’ (future practitioners and researchers) first exposure to I-O psychology through undergraduate textbooks. They stress that how our occupation is publicly presented will affect the identity of its future members. We argue that the gender crisis could also send a message about who we are and what we value as members of the academy. Luckily, undergraduate students are not necessarily keen on the current gender disparity in the field, as textbook citations only list the last and not the first names of authors. However, the gender disparity will become apparent as those undergraduate students further explore their “favorite topics” and graduate schools. Summarily, we need to “retake our house” and show that I-O psychology values all players regardless of sex (or race, or other individual difference)!